Brendon Shumate - Contributor

Brendon Shumate is currently employed slinging sugar-milks for a popular multi-national corporate coffee chain in the suburbs of Atlanta, but he’s finally starting school in the spring, and he’s going to get his life together, he swears. He was born in the late 80s, and it doesn’t seem like the world is going to let him live that down. He first discovered that he gave a damn about music in his mid-teens, when the Tampa, Florida alternative station added tracks by Brand New and Jimmy Eat World into rotation, and later cut his indie teeth on Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service back before Ben Gibbard decided to move on to writing mediocre pop-rock for commuting dads -- but hey, what does “indie” even mean anymore, right?

He’s a little embarrassed by his soft-spot for sad young men with acoustic guitars á la For Emma, Forever Ago, but feels unjustifiable pride over his adoration of Spencer Krug, and he rolls his eyes at himself every time he’s forced to assert that he liked Arcade Fire before they were big. Lately he’s been getting into pop-punk, because the Wonder Years just get it. His pastimes include video gaming, loathing, and writing self-deprecating bios that reference too many bands. He will probably copy-and-paste this into the “about me” section of some online dating website. He gets lonely; sue him.